Avoidance May Be the Key

The good news is that we can prevent mold from affecting your health. Avoidance is often the most important part of treatment. For example, my patient Louise, 61 years old, came in complaining of nasal congestion, bad sinus headaches, a persistent cough, and feeling run down. When I was taking her medical history, she mentioned
that there was aleak in her apartment where mold grew around the walls and the floor. She noticed that she felt worse whenever she was in her home, but her landlord refused to clean up the mold, and she could not afford to have her apartment rehabilitated. My first suggestion was that Louise should consider finding a new apartment, but she was reluctant to believe that the mold was the cause of her problems. I started treating her with various medicines and nasal irrigations, and every time she came in I urged her to move. While the treatments helped her symptoms, it wasn’t until she finally moved out of her apartment that she improved dramatically.